Polly Vernon
ACCORDING TO SOME SHIZZLE I just read online, ‘ micro scheduling’ is the
New Thing and Everyone’s Doing It. It involves breaking your day into tiny time slots and allocating small tasks to each. Micro schedulers say it makes them feel more in control and ‘less like they’re constantly failing’, which is odd, because just looking at a sample micro schedule (7am: wake up. 7.10am: catch up on news. 7.15am: boil kettle for tea. 7.16am: check emails while kettle boils. 7.16am and 12s: wipe down sides while kettle is still boiling) made me feel ‘panicked’ and ‘like I was going to have a migraine’. After that passed, I realised micro schedulers are wrong. The secret to a full and joyous life is the exact opposite of micro scheduling. Instead of having lots of things to do and tiny times in which to do them, what you need is a very few things to do, and a lot of time. You could call this ‘macro scheduling ™’. I call it ‘life, according to me’.
Because I am wise and unusually advanced for my age, I’ve worked out I need only dedicate my existence to doing three things well to be happy – nothing else matters. My three things are: wearing good clothes, writing and Pilates. My things that don’t matter are: cooking (not when there are ready-meals nestling in a freezer cabinet somewhere!), interior design ( just paint it white then buy a cushion), and motherhood ( in this day and age?) – and that’s for starters.
So it is that my average macro scheduled day goes: write something funny having already ensured you look excellent in jeans, do a mat class – fin! Job done, goalz met, time to Netflix then drift off to beddie bo-bos, sleepily running through prospective concepts for the following day’s great outfit.
This is not to say that’s all I do. Inevitably, other stuff happens around those core activities. I’ll p’raps have a meeting, bump into a mate, go to the loo (not just once, but several times), inadvertently learn the lyrics to a pop song, have a bust-up with some muppet on Twitter, Ponder Life, wipe down a side… But these are mere unscheduled freestyle happenings, diversions from the main three-pointer purpose of my macro sched. I don’t have to do them well. I don’t have to do them at all!
The benefits of ditching a micro schedule for a macro stretch from: not going mad to not understanding what other women are on about when they invoke the ‘tyranny of multi-disciplinary perfectionism’, via not having your friends call you a sociopath behind your back. So forget love. Three things! Three things are all you need!